


The Arbat in December: A Study

by thomasjeffersonsmacaroni



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-20
Updated: 2019-12-20
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:14:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21874987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thomasjeffersonsmacaroni/pseuds/thomasjeffersonsmacaroni
Summary: Fun fact: I actually wrote this about a year ago for a poetry assignment in English, but just now remembered about it while going through my files.Anyway, I haven't been writing much because I'm super busy with college, so it's just been vague ideas flying around my head. I'm also going through my old fics and deleting the ones that are Non-Gamer Cringe(TM). No, this does not include my Shrekruto masterpiece. That stays forever.





	The Arbat in December: A Study

**_I. Sneg_ **

The snow is spread over the ground like margarine, but not smooth margarine about to be eaten by someone who has everything figured out. Margarine spread over bread that’s been stale for a week, margarine applied in brushstrokes upon messy brushstrokes, applied with every bite that makes it apparent that no one would be able to eat without margarine that’s as thick as the bread.

The snow fills the print of each foot that steps upon it. People walk one after the other, hand-in-hand with vague shadows from streetlights, living without knowing the people they live with.

And the snow stays. It stays forever.

**_II. Druz’ya_ **

It’s not really a walk. It’s a stumble and an arm wrapped around shoulders, the supporter standing on legs strong from this experience repeated, endless like the snowflakes falling like the supported is about to.

The supported’s breath smells of beer. Doesn’t it always? Liquored vapor leaving his open mouth and fading away and replaced by more liquored vapor. The supporter’s arm is still wrapped around his shoulders, fingers tight with frozenness and anger and stubborn friendship.

It’s cold, so cold. They walk slowly.

The supporter remembers when it wasn’t like this, when the supported stood on two legs, when they visited not pubs but libraries and houses and museums. The supporter remembers when they spent nights with Chebyshev and Dostoevsky and Tolstoy and Marx, not Anya with the big tits who would look even better with another drink or four. The supporter always hated Marx. But he would give everything in the world to discuss even him now.

The supporter bites his lip and says nothing.

**_III. Papa_ **

He walks slowly down the Arbat, gloveless, too-slender fingers wrapped around his children’s hands.

Coins are cold, but paper is warmer. His money is mostly coins, carefully counted the night before, but he doesn’t have much of either. The emptiness in his pocket weighs him down.

He’s walking with his children, little Dima and Masha with eyes wide as Russia itself, sparkling like all the lights on the Arbat. He’s seen how they look through shop windows at toys he’ll never afford – but maybe if he works some more while they’re at school, maybe if he stops spending money on himself. He’s willing to bargain, willing to work, willing to spend all night among the snowflakes in the winter coat he’s made last for years past when it first got too tight for him, hands bare because he couldn’t afford gloves.

_Skoro noviy goht_. It’s almost New Year’s. Almost time for celebration, beginnings, Russian children with glistening eyes believing in magic. _Skoro noviy goht,_ and he has to figure out how he can say that everything is all right, that he can’t do anything to stop them from being teased for wearing that old dull brown thin winter dress and that new ridiculous cheap bright green coat, that it won’t be over soon but he’ll be damned if he doesn’t figure out how they can hurt less.

_Skoro noviy goht._ It sounds like an omen.

**_IV. Toska_ **

He is wearing a gray _ushanka_ that his grandmother knitted for him before she died. She is hatless, white hair spilling like milk down her shoulders. Her gloved hand presses against his arm, and he feels it through the layers that protect him against the bitter Russian air. _General Moroz,_ he thinks, General Frost, and he thinks about how strong Russia was against Napoleon and Hitler and yet how weak _he_ is for not taking off his _ushanka_ and placing it on her head, tucking her little pale ears beneath the flaps on the sides, cupping her cheek in one of his hands so that her cheek is warm even as everything else is cold. He is wearing a brown winter coat that he could barely buy with his student’s salary. She has a student’s salary too, but her coat is nice and soft and new and bought by someone who provides for her. It warms her even though her face is exposed, cheeks and nose and ears pinkish from the cold.

Her hand wraps around his arm as she guides him through the snowy Arbat. The street glows with moonlight and lamplight and the faint lights of insomniacs behind the houses’ windows. The snow crunches below her boots. She always complains about those boots, how they’re a size too small and make her toes hurt. He would buy her new ones if he were a stronger man. He would carry her like he would a bride if he were a stronger man.

They pass by a _yuvelirnya,_ cases of necklaces and watches on velvet. She stops at the diamond engagement rings. Her boyfriend hasn’t proposed to her, and he’s been away from Moscow for so long that she’s not sure if he still will. She stiffens, looking at anything and everything but the _yuvelirnya,_ and he watches her, stone faced.

She makes a joke to break the tension, and her laugh turns into vapor that fades away like hope. They keep walking down the Arbat, barely touching.

**_V. Odna_ **

She’s wearing a coat that’s just a bit too big for her. It’s black, and it’s her father’s, but she’s wearing it while he’s away on a business trip. She’s been wearing it for months now, six cold months in their apartment, one empty bed on the other side of the room she can barely afford now, three rings and silence every time she calls.

She kicks the snow as she storms through it, but she doesn’t care about her cold toes. She’s walking so slowly that she shivers, even though she’s lived through Moscow winters her entire life.

She looks up at the sky, a blend of every blue she can imagine, mixed and frozen like her tears. She pulls the collar of the coat over her mouth, breathes in deep.

She shivers, not sure if it’s with cold or anger or longing or some combination. She moves to take the coat off, but pauses, realizes that she would freeze without it. Her hands are fists in its pockets.

No one should be alone before _noviy goht_. No one _is_ alone but her, storming through the snow in her father’s coat to something she can’t place.

Laughter buzzes around her. It echoes through her heart.

**_VI. Proshloye_ **

They’re in their forties. She had not before considered age to be particularly important, until the forties. Too late to run away from this sad little street, too early to say it’ll be over soon; he’ll die, and she’ll be free.

There was a time when she loved him. A vague sense comes to her – how it felt to have her heart beat faster, warming her heart despite the snow. She doubts she has a heart now; if she does, it’s frozen, and his ever-cold hands do nothing to thaw it.

She doesn’t understand how she can miss someone who’s right next to her. She doesn’t understand how she can feel so trapped by someone who once made her so free. She doesn’t understand how something so hot can completely freeze over.

That’s what Moscow does, she thinks. Consumes and consumes and consumes until there’s nothing but ice and dimly lit houses.

She walks. The silence freezes on her lips.

**_VII. Luna_ **

It’s off-center, if you’re looking at the Arbat down the middle. Just a wedge of white in the middle of a blue that isn’t quite blue. Added as an afterthought, not quite belonging in the December sky.

The moon is glowing, but it’s a dull, “barely” kind of glow. As if it had put so much effort into just staying alive that now there’s nothing left but that little dimness, cowardly above the lamps it hovers over.

The moon hangs over December, watching bodies move through never-ending snow.

**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact: I actually wrote this about a year ago for a poetry assignment in English, but just now remembered about it while going through my files.  
> Anyway, I haven't been writing much because I'm super busy with college, so it's just been vague ideas flying around my head. I'm also going through my old fics and deleting the ones that are Non-Gamer Cringe(TM). No, this does not include my Shrekruto masterpiece. That stays forever.


End file.
